So, I've realized I have gotten a little ahead of myself with this writing thing. I've realized I haven't shared why I've been thinking about the ideas I've written or why I think they are so important. So lest I continue coming across preachy or theologically-anal, I want to share with you the context from which these ideas have come.
I grew up in a "Christian" family and we went to church every Sunday. When I was in Sunday school I got the whole flannel-graph, story-time treatment and punch and cookies if I was good. I was taught that Jesus was God and that God was really nice to those who loved him, and consequently was subconsciously taught that bad things didn't happen to Christians. Well, throughout my elementary school years I was the butt of many a mean joke and was picked on almost everyday at school (People seem to be surprised when I've told them that, but I say this: the playground knows only height and muscle, not future potential. Sad but true). I would go home to a house where my parents were always fighting and usually I couldn't do anything right in their eyes. Well, through a series of truly unfortunate events, I stumbled across an avenue to numb the pain and cope. As middle school and early high school arrived, I began to meet more people who would actually befriend me, and were nice people; but the scars still remained from elementary school. What I didn't realize at the time was that, quite literally, the walls I had built up around my broken, wounded, and bleeding heart were meant to keep hurt and pain out, but they had become something that kept me in, and I was really dying inside.
Here's the hard part, this entire time I was heavily involved in youthgroup at church. I was gradually finding people who I could open up to, and at the same time that let me begin to see what was truly going on inside me. Yet I was still hiding in a lot of ways and I was using my youthgroup to hide from the pain at home. Of course, I couldn't put all this into words then, but God has been bringing me back to a lot of events in my childhood recently, and has been redeeming them and healing my heart through them.
Half-way through high school my family switched churches. I began to meet some truly kind and loving people there and also at my high-school. I was ever-so-slightly beginning to feel that the world was a safe place for my heart. Despite this there was still a lot of hurt inside me and I was feeling very trapped by the things that I had used to help deal with the pain. This back and forth struggle was very very hard on me, and a lot of shame built up in my heart because of it. A lot of good things began happening through the last few years of high-school and into my first couple years of community college. I began to be able to confess the stuff that was killing me on the inside and talk with people about it. But it wasn't until this past season when I transferred to Anderson University in Indiana that a whole lot of things began changing and clicking for me.
As I was getting ready to transfer to AU, I went out there for a weekend to register. There I met the guy who would become my roommate. At the end of one of the days, even though we really didn't know each other at all, he asked if I wanted to room with him. In the moment I felt like I wasn't ready to give an answer, but I felt caught off gaurd and so I said yes. Things started off good with him, but a few weeks in I began to realize that he was a very up-tight person. Any of you how know me, know that I am not up tight at all. I love talking with people, I love hearing how a person was doing. My roommate also loved to "lend his knowledge" to any situation he happened to come upon. Things between us started to deteriorate and I began to see that he very much had the outlook on life of an elementary school bully. In addition, there wasn't any person on the hall that I really connected with. That semester was really really hard for me because I hadn't felt that alone since I was a kid, plus I was rooming with the bully. Two things happened that semester as a result: I began to gain courage to stand up for myself and I genuinly felt God with me in some very dark and lonely moments that semester. There were a few points where stuff was so frustrating and painful that I would cry myself to sleep. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I was homesick or anything related to school or being someplace unfamiliar. I love adventures! It was the fact that I felt like I was a kid again back on the playground getting picked on.
It was during this time that I realized the God I had been told about in Sunday school didn't exist. Life apparently didn't get better for Christians, and I began going through a period really wondering who God was and why all this stuff was happening. Looking back he has been so incredibly merciful, graceful, and loving through my confusion, anger, and he has been constantly telling me, despite what I've told myself or heard from others that my heart is good.
Second semester went better in a lot of ways. I began to connect with some of the guys on my hall in ways I hadn't before. But I had no idea that there were some really hard things coming down the pipe for me again. Two really big things happened that semester. Number one, I was not able to find a job that semester at all (Anderson isn't one for good jobs) and I had bills to pay. It was really hard for me because some of the most painful moments in my life at home dealt with money and my parents fighting about it. That semester, God showed me that I can trust him. There were points where I had no money and somehow my bills were paid. I still have no idea how to this day, but in some of those fearful and painful moments, God showed me very personally and powerfully that he is Jehovah Jireh. Although, I still struggle with trusting him in these areas (as I write this I've been without a job for a year-and-a-half, no car insurance, very little money) he has truly shown me that if I trust him, he will provide even the most basic needs. That definitely has gone against the American Dream mindset that I grew up with.
The second event was my trip to the hospital. One night, my stomach started feeling really weird. I ended up throwing up several times and my stomach was convulsing really hard. After my RD called the campus EMT and I was looked over, I went to the hospital to get looked at again. I was there all night and continued to throw up off and on. They ran tests throughout the night and the doctor told me a couple times that medically there was nothing wrong with me. I laughed a little bitterly to myself because, obviously something was going on, and I was kind of angry that they couldn't find it. Well, when they were going to let me go, it was around 6 in the morning. As I was getting into the wheelchair to go to the car, my entire body locked up suddenly. I couldn't move, I couldn't talk intelligibly, my throat was closing up, and I was having a really hard time breathing. I started freaking out because I truly thought I was going to suffocate, and to make matters worse the nurse wasn't taking me seriously when I said I couldn't breathe. Eventually I was put back up in the bed, but nothing was changing and internally I was panicking. I felt like a scared little kid (Ironic how often that was happening at that point in my life), and I kept saying to God "I don't want to die". My girlfriend was there and was trying to calm me down but I wasn't having any of it. To make a long story shorter, I eventually got better and went back to school where I slept.
Later I began to realize that I freaked out so bad in that moment because my life had slipped beyond my control and I didn't think that God was doing what was good in that moment. That opened up my eyes to the fact that I had some serious control issues, and I doubted God's goodness in really painful moments. Most of it, I believe developed along side the coping when I was a child. God began a work in me that night to release control of a lot of things to him, and trust in his heart. The next semester I began to go to counsoling at AU and that helped me work through so many things that happened to me as a child and how they are still affecting me. There are a lot more aspects and important events to this story than I can write, so ask me sometime if you want to hear more.
What makes this story important, and related to why I write, is because during all of this time, I began to know a God who doesn't make things better always, but will use horrible things as a basis for a beautiful and mighty work of art. I have come to realize that so much of what is being taught in a lot of churches these days is inadequate for the lives that real humans live.
My heart is for humanity to be restored, and I truly believe that the Church should be the hope of the world. Over these past two years, I've been learning so much about myself, how I've been hurt, and areas that I need deep healing in. Alongside of that, I've been learning so much about God's hope for humanity, how we've been hurt/hurt each other, and places we need deep healing. That has lead me down some paths of questioning and re-owning a lot I was taught theologically throughout my life, as well as what is being taught today. My heart burns for the church to become who she truly is, so that humanity can be restored to the amazing existance that it came from.
The things I write about are fruits of a journey of seeking out and finding truth. I believe there are a lot of things, which may seem like small nit-picky things, that when realized and internalized will radically change a persons life. My life has changed so much over the past year and a half because I've begun to see who Jesus really is and with that I have found a hope for something so much bigger than many people know (both "Christians" and non-Christians alike). So when I speak of the truth, or of the Church, or why maybe we use the word "Christian" in a wrong way, or why our concepts of heaven and hell might not be right, or why the body of Christ in America has fallen in love with the market and democracy rather than Jesus, or of free-will, I speak of them because I yearn that every man, woman, child would begin to find truth as I am beginning to find it because, as it is in my life, from that the most amazing, beautiful, and redemptive hope will bloom!
I don't say that you must agree with me (although, I do hope you will sincerely think about what I say and not write it off as "liberal" or ignorant theology). But just know that everything I write comes from a heart desiring Jesus and his truth, because I believe that his truth is redemptive and that in that truth, humanity's hope is found.
Also, feel free to leave comments, questions, pixel-art, etc. Let's have a conversation, I like those! Blessings and hope to you!
One Love. One World.
